How the left picks names so reasonable Americans can't criticize the group. Antifa stands for "Antifascist," but that's purposefully deceptive. For one thing, the very name is calibrated so that anyone who dares to criticize the group or its tactics can be labeled "fascist." This allows Antifa to justify violence against all who dare stand up to or speak out against them. How did I get out of it? Like anyone who gets out something bad; I encountered something good—the very system that I had sought to destroy. Friends—people who turned out to be my real friends—pointed me to challenging thinkers like Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, and Ben Shapiro; and eventually organizations like the Leadership Institute and PragerU. What they said just made sense. And it offered me a better way to live. Antifa and the radical left did not care about building a better society, they cared about control. They could only offer me more anger, bitterness, unhappiness and destruction.